ST ANNE’S
DUNBAR GOSPELS
2nd Sunday before Lent - 23rd Feb 2014
Childlike trust
Readings:
Romans
8: 18-25 – Creation
has been groaning in labour pains
Matthew
6: 25-34 – Do not
worry; your Father knows your needs
“Therefore,
do not worry”. In my case, I have to say, this is a counsel of perfection. I
was probably born worrying. But I suspect that Jesus isn’t saying “Don’t worry;
be happy”, let’s all chill out and just go with the flow because everything’s
going to be ok. Because life isn’t like that, or at least it isn’t for most
people.
Already
Jesus has his eyes fixed on Jerusalem. He knows where he’s going and everything
isn’t going to be ok. And for all those people who just clamour to draw power
out of him – healing, kindness, love, forgiveness – he knows it doesn’t all
turn out ok for them. He’ll raise Lazarus, but Lazarus will die again. It’s
what Paul’s talking about when he says: the whole creation groans in labour
pains. Which is what drives Jesus to Jerusalem and the Cross for our sakes.
Because this is where darkness will be conquered, death won’t get the last
word, so that that finally, because of Jesus, we do indeed know that everything
will be not just ok, but better than that.
But
for now, here is Jesus trying to teach us how to live in the now like he
does. And so he almost takes us back to the garden of Eden. The world may not
feel like Paradise any more, but God has not withdrawn his blessing from it. He
still looks on us, and the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and
the very soil itself out of which we sprang, and calls all of it good. Jesus
reminds us we’re creatures, we’re dependent on God and God’s world for
everything we need. In which there is a kind of freedom for us.
It’s
all right to admit my need for God, my need for other people. Just as God said:
It is not good for man to be alone, so he knows our need for each other and for
the ultimate Other, God himself. So I don’t have to pretend that I’m coping
better than I actually am. This “don’t worry” I think contains “don’t worry
about pretending you’ve got everything in life all sorted out”.
Many
things in the media push an idea of what it is to be a successful human being. So lots of people spend their lives worrying
about how they look, what kind of house they’ve got, how their children are
doing compared to other people’s children, whether they’re keeping up the
newest generation of whatever social
media site is now in fashion.
So
there’s a lot to worry about. Being left out, left behind is a major anxiety
when you’re young. And it’s not that great when you’re older either. Because
you’re left with that sinking feeling that you’re losing the battle to get to
grips with life, to be in control. You’re not wanted because you don’t measure
up to what you think the world expects of you, and you can have that feeling at
any age.
And
this is why Jesus puts before us this big picture vision of where we fit into
the God’s scheme of things. We’re part of a beauty and a wonder that is greater
than ourselves, precious to God almost beyond words, every hair of our heads
counted, every tear we ever cried stored, the psalmist says, in God’s bottle,
and one with the birds and the lilies.
All
the time, God gives. Ignatius Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises just wonders at
this. He says all the time God’s sending us good things: sunshine and rain,
food and clothing, love and friendship, mercy and forgiveness. I just need to
turn my face to the sun and receive, turn away from my own darkness and my
sense of lack, my permanent awareness of what I don’t have, and bask in all
that God does give me. That refrain of the psalmist: “For his mercy
endures for ever”, needs to be ours.
One way to make this awareness
part of your life is a very simple practice, again from St Ignatius, called the
examen. I was given this by an older nun friend at a time when I didn’t feel I
had much to be thankful about in life and my trust in God was being challenged.
And she gave me this very simple, childlike pattern for praying at the end of
the day: Thank you; sorry, please.
So you begin, a bit like the
psalmist, by bringing to consciousness whatever’s been good in this day – which
often brings to the surface more things to be thankful for than you could ever
have imagined (a phone call from a friend, a lovely sunset – anything at all that’s gone well today). The “Sorry” part isn’t about
beating yourself up, but again in a very creaturely, childlike way, to bring
your life under God’s mercy – the interaction with someone that you could have
handled better, the hard word you spoke maybe, or the hard word spoken to you.
You just hold it before the God who loves you and allow him to help you let it
go.
And finally, “Please”, where you
turn your praying beyond yourself to anyone that you have on your heart and
want to bring to God. Thank you; Sorry; Please. There’s a very popular book
about this, written in the style of a book for children called: “Living with
Bread, holding what gives you life”. The book gets its title from something
that happened just after the Second World War where children who’d been
orphaned were being looked after together and often at night they couldn’t
sleep because they were so afraid there’d be nothing to eat next day. So
someone came up with the idea of giving the children a piece of bread to put
under their pillows simply to reassure them that just as there had been bread
today, so there would be bread for tomorrow. Hence: Sleeping with bread:
holding what gives you life.
And that’s what the examen is for,
looking for the light in your life and following it. And what people find is
that if you do this, and you make thankfulness your last thought at night, it
will almost certainly be your first thought in the morning. This is what puts
us into the place where Jesus, knowing how hard our lives can be, longs for us
to be. In one translation of one the beatitudes Jesus says: how blessed are
they who know their need of God. So we know we don’t have to have all the
answers or everything under control. We learn again how to be children, how to
let go and trust that the one who doesn’t let a sparrow fall to the ground
unnoticed holds us in his love, daily, hourly, moment by moment in this life,
and in the life to come.
“Sleeping with
Bread: holding what gives you life”, by Dennis Linn (ed), available from Cornerstone
Bookshop www.cornerstonebooks.org.uk/
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